JOHNSTOWN, PA -- [Diocesan Chancery] Our Diocese is pleased to announce a series of Parenting Workshops designed to help parents raise their children in the Faith. The title of the series is “Raising Believing Children” and will focus on the ways parents can help their children stay faithful to Christ and His Church in a world that is filled with doubt and most often works against their Faith. The Workshops are for parents of any age – you’re never too old to be a son or daughter, and likewise you’re never too old to be a parent! This series of Parenting Workshops will be hosted by different Churches and Deaneries around our Diocese starting in March 2019. The first Workshop in the Series will be hosted by Sts. Peter and Paul Church in Rockaway, NJ on March 2, 2019. The first will feature His Eminence Metropolitan Gregory of Nyssa and Very Rev. Stephen Loposky as presenters and workshop facilitators. Each workshop will be broadcast live online and will be archived for later viewing as well, and will include both presentations and small group moderated discussions to allow participants to help each other in their lives as parents. Read more...

Fast Questions and Fast Answers about the Geography of Orthodoxy in America is the second essay in a group of mini-reports about Orthodox Church life in America. Surprising, stimulating, and, at the same time, important facts about the geographic distribution of Orthodox parishes and church members in America are discussed in this essay. Read More ...

Meditations for Orthodox Families

Weekly meditations for families, with Saint’s stories, Scriptures and lessons designed to open up conversation and to enrich the family’s “Little Church.”

Stillness. In the midst of the Nativity Lent, Kristina Wenger and Elissa Bjeletich take some time to consider how stillness allows us to hear God's still small voice, and how practicing stillness might become a part of our fast.

For us, the Nativity Fast serves to refresh the last part of the year - mystically renewing our spiritual unity with God and preparing us for the Feast of the Nativity of Christ.

St. Leo the Great wrote: “Four periods [of the year] have been set aside as times of abstinence so that over the course of the year we might recognize that we are constantly in need of purification, and that amid life’s distractions, we should always strive by means of fasting and acts of charity to extirpate sin, sin which is multiplied in our transitory flesh and in our impure desires.”

According to St. Leo the Great, the Nativity Fast is a sacrifice to God [in return for] the gathered harvest.

The Holy Hierarch stated, “Just as the Lord has generously granted us abundance of the fruits of the earth, so should we, during the time of this Fast, be generous to the poor.”

According to St. Symeon of Thessalonica, “…the Nativity Forty-day Fast represents the fast undertaken by Moses, who, having fasted for forty days and forty nights, received the Commandments of God, written on stone tablets [of the Law]. And we, fasting for forty days, will reflect upon and receive from the Virgin of the living Word - not written upon stone, but born, incarnate, and we will commune of His Divine Body.”

The Nativity Fast was established to allow us through repentance, prayer and fasting to cleanse ourselves before the Nativity of Christ, so that with clean heart, soul, and body, we might reverently meet the Son of God, Who has come into the world and so that in addition to bringing the usual gifts and sacrifices, we might bring Him our clean hearts and a desire to follow His teachings. Read more...

Visit www.orthodoxgoods.com the official on-line store of the American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese of the USA. At Orthodox Goods you may purchase items from Christ the Saviour Seminary Bookstore, Gloria Incense and The Liturgical Publications Department of the Diocesan Chancery.

Orthodox Christian Stewardship is a Christ-centered lifestyle, which acknowledges accountability, reverence, and responsibility before God. Orthodox Christian Stewardship is a call to all of the faithful to share willingly and cheerfully the gifts that God has bestowed on them including sharing these gifts for God’s work in His Church.